Another Hitler Starting a Holocaust

People like to throw the "H" word around a lot. But it's not often that people apply it to themselves. But that's exactly what Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte did today:

President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he would like to kill millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, defying international criticism of his country’s bloody war on narcotics and escalating his brutal rhetoric with a reference to the Holocaust.

“Hitler massacred three million Jews,” Mr. Duterte said after returning to the Philippines from a trip to Vietnam, understating the toll cited by historians, which is six million. “Now there is three million, there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

Duterte started a "war" against crime and drugs after coming to office. More than 3,000 Filipinos have been slaughtered without arrest warrants or trials. About two-thirds of the killings were by vigilantes, which Duterte has blessed.

Hitler started in a similar way, attacking, imprisoning and ultimately murdering minorities like gays, communists, and Jews. But before long his tyranny was extended to political opponents and anyone who dared speak against him.

Duterte has frequently been called the Trump of the Philippines because of his boorish dickishness. But is Donald Trump really like Duterte and Hitler?

A recent New York Times review of a book about Hitler's rise to power reads like bullet points from Trump's presidential campaign: Hitler was an narcissist with a fondness for superlatives, Hitler had a boundless mendacity, Hitler promised to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness, Hitler intentionally dumbed down his speeches to a few slogans because he thought the understanding of the masses was feeble, Hitler blamed Jews and foreigners for all Germany's economic problems. And so on.

It sure sounds like Trump, if you replace Jews with Mexicans.

But is Trump really going down the same path as Duterte and Hitler, or are people making the same old lame Internet Hitler analogies? It's impossible to say for sure.

But American Nazis, alt-right activists, klansmen and white supremacists and white separatists are all backing Trump to the hilt.

If they think Trump is the second coming of Hitler, perhaps we should take the comparison seriously.